CALHOUN, Ga. — Georgia’s top environmental officials knew for nearly two decades that the carpet mills of the state’s northwest corner were saturating rivers with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — the persistent industrial chemicals known as PFAS — but the state declined to regulate the pollution, warn residents, or cooperate with downstream Alabama officials who asked for help, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Associated Press, and FRONTLINE (PBS).
The investigation, which drew on court records, internal government communications, and interviews, found that Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division adopted what one former federal regulator described as a defensive posture, deferring to the industry that anchors the regional economy even as academic and federal testing confirmed “staggeringly high” PFAS levels in the Conasauga River. The river supplies drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people and flows across the state line into eastern Alabama.
Starting in the 1970s, the textile mills of northwest Georgia relied on PFAS to add stain resistance to carpets. Chemicals that did not adhere to the fibers were flushed with the industry’s wastewater into local sewer systems and, eventually, the region’s rivers. Decades later, the odorless and colorless compounds are found throughout the area, including in residents’ blood. Scientists have linked PFAS exposure to certain cancers, liver damage, and immune-system effects.
The chemicals are commonly called “forever chemicals” because they persist in the human body and take decades or more to break down in the environment.
Testing by the University of Georgia in 2008 first alerted the industry and state regulators that the Conasauga carried what subsequent state and federal sampling confirmed were extraordinary PFAS loads. Georgia’s own tests in 2012 and 2016 corroborated the university’s findings. Federal sampling still detected the chemicals in 2019, the year major carpet manufacturers said they stopped using PFAS. But Georgia EPD issued no fish-consumption advisories and no do-not-drink orders against the tap water that local utilities, lacking the advanced filtration technology required to remove PFAS, were drawing from the river.
Anna Truszczynski, deputy director of Georgia EPD, said her agency looked to federal regulators for guidance and waited for scientists to better understand the risks. “We believe that there can be a good balance between environment and economy,” Truszczynski said. “We don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has still not set enforceable drinking-water limits for PFAS, though proposed limits covering the two compounds the carpet industry used most heavily are scheduled to take effect in 2031. EPA spokesman Jake Murphy said the agency is working to offer technical and financial support in the region.
Court deposition transcripts obtained by the news organizations show that the state’s posture toward regulation was established early. In 2008, then-EPD Director Carol Couch met privately with carpet-company representatives and the Carpet and Rug Institute, the industry’s trade association. Werner Braun, then the institute’s director, later informed his board that Couch had indicated the agency had “no plans to initiate regulatory action” on PFAS and “would probably look at the issue again in five years,” according to the deposition records. One carpet executive thanked attendees for “gaining this good outcome,” the transcripts show.
In a text message, Couch said PFAS were only an “emerging concern” at the time and that EPA had not yet established drinking-water standards. “To the Carpet and Rug Institute I offered no respite from state regulation of PFAS,” Couch wrote. She added that the five-year review timeline was standard for new water rules and that in 2008 the state agency “had neither the sufficient science, expertise nor resources to undertake action independent of USEPA.”
The Carpet and Rug Institute declined to comment. Braun did not respond to a request for comment.
Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries, the country’s two largest carpet manufacturers and both based in the region, said their chemical suppliers hid the dangers of PFAS for years. The carpet companies said they followed regulators’ guidance. In court filings, chemical suppliers 3M and DuPont countered that it was the carpet industry, not the chemical companies, that ultimately put the chemicals into the waters of northwest Georgia. None of the four companies offered comment for the news organizations’ investigation.
When PFAS began showing up in Alabama drinking water in 2016, local utility officials looked upstream toward Georgia for answers. The two states share a river system that rises in the Blue Ridge Mountains and flows through the carpet-manufacturing hub of Dalton, Georgia, before crossing into Alabama on its way to Mobile Bay. After Alabama tests detected PFAS at levels exceeding EPA’s voluntary health guidelines at the time, Alabama’s environmental regulators alerted their federal counterparts and asked Georgia EPD for help identifying the source.
Jim Giattina, former director of EPA’s Water Protection Division who organized a call between the states, said Georgia EPD was “very defensive.” “There was certainly no commitment on their part to do any more monitoring,” Giattina said in an interview. Truszczynski, who joined the agency in 2016, said she found no record of Georgia’s response. “We’re always very happy to work with our friends in Alabama,” she said. Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
The Georgia experience stands in contrast with other states. Wisconsin earlier this year approved $133 million for PFAS cleanup. Michigan and Maine have both launched extensive testing programs and sued polluters. Jill Billings, a Wisconsin Democratic assembly member whose district includes a community that has relied on state-provided bottled water since 2021, said state-led action becomes more important as the federal government retreats from environmental regulation. “I think it’s up to us to solve the problems of regular folks because the federal government seems to be struggling,” Billings said. “That’s fine. We’re ready.”
Everyone in northwest Georgia seems to know someone whose health problems, including certain cancers, could be connected to PFAS exposure, the investigation found. The crisis, residents and scientists told the news organizations, was predictable. The state’s decision not to intervene for nearly two decades means the chemicals will remain in the water, the sediment, and the bodies of residents for generations.